Данте Алигьери – Inferno (страница 15)

Exclaimed: “My Master, now declare to me

What people these are, and if all were clerks,

These shaven crowns upon the left of us.”

And he to me: “All of them were asquint

In intellect in the first life, so much

That there with measure they no spending made.

Clearly enough their voices bark it forth,

Whene’er they reach the two points of the circle,

Where sunders them the opposite defect.

Clerks those were who no hairy covering

Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals,

In whom doth Avarice practise its excess.”

And I: “My Master, among such as these

I ought forsooth to recognise some few,

Who were infected with these maladies.”

And he to me: “Vain thought thou entertainest;

The undiscerning life which made them sordid

Now makes them unto all discernment dim.

Forever shall they come to these two buttings;

These from the sepulchre shall rise again

With the fist closed, and these with tresses shorn.

Ill giving and ill keeping the fair world

Have ta’en from them, and placed them in this scuffle;

Whate’er it be, no words adorn I for it.

Now canst thou, Son, behold the transient farce

Of goods that are committed unto Fortune,

For which the human race each other buffet;

For all the gold that is beneath the moon,

Or ever has been, of these weary souls

Could never make a single one repose.”

“Master,” I said to him, “now tell me also

What is this Fortune which thou speakest of,

That has the world’s goods so within its clutches?”

And he to me: “O creatures imbecile,

What ignorance is this which doth beset you?

Now will I have thee learn my judgment of her.

He whose omniscience everything transcends

The heavens created, and gave who should guide them,

That every part to every part may shine,

Distributing the light in equal measure;

He in like manner to the mundane splendours

Ordained a general ministress and guide,

That she might change at times the empty treasures

From race to race, from one blood to another,

Beyond resistance of all human wisdom.

Therefore one people triumphs, and another

Languishes, in pursuance of her judgment,

Which hidden is, as in the grass a serpent.

Your knowledge has no counterstand against her;

She makes provision, judges, and pursues

Her governance, as theirs the other gods.

Her permutations have not any truce;

Necessity makes her precipitate,

So often cometh who his turn obtains.

And this is she who is so crucified

Even by those who ought to give her praise,

Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute.

But she is blissful, and she hears it not;

Among the other primal creatures gladsome

She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices.

Let us descend now unto greater woe;

Already sinks each star that was ascending

When I set out, and loitering is forbidden.”

We crossed the circle to the other bank,

Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself